Love Doesn’t Pay the Bills: A Discussion on Alternative Fundraising

Monday, December 4th

3:00-4:15pm Eastern/12-1:15pm Pacific

Love Doesn't Pay the Bills: Besides the typical grant award, what are other inventive and productive fundraising options worth pursuing? The practice of documenting essential narratives for our community often begins and ends as a "labor of love." Yet, love doesn't alway cut it or at least severely limits the scope of good work that is possible. This PSN allows storytellers, oral historians, documentarians and activists to share alternative ideas for garnering essential financial support. We invite you to join the discussion about your successful out-of-the-box campaigns or fabulously wild ideas.

Shefa Nola Benoit is a former executive of a leading national youth development organization who spent 15+ years implementing funder-driven programs from the top down. Discouraged by the growing disconnect of funders and agencies from their targeted communities, Shefa augmented her methodology through the use of oral history by collecting unscripted and uncensored voices to facilitate asset-based, community-driven solutions. Today, Shefa is Founder of Roots and Reasons Productions where she works on independent projects and contracts with reformist nonprofits who are ready for communal prosperity.

Amy Starecheski is a cultural anthropologist and oral historian whose research focuses on the use of oral history in social movements and the politics of urban property. She is the Co-Director of the Oral History MA Program at Columbia University. Starecheski is a member of the Core Working Group for Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change, where she facilitates the Practitioner Support Network. In 2016 she was awarded the Sapiens-Allegra “Will the Next Margaret Mead Please Stand Up?” prize for public anthropological writing. She received a PhD in cultural anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she was a Public Humanities Fellow. Her book, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City, was published in 2016 by the University of Chicago Press.